Originally posted by Kaimarx Totally makes no sense for Pentax to put out so many ranges. For a small-ish company to be playing catch up to the estabilished market leaders is a sure fire way to sink the ship. Maybe not tommorow, but eventually the expansion costs will come back to bite the company in the behind.
Well, that's somewhat why I think they ought to keep it to a couple-few *platforms.* There can be different *models* with different feature sets without supporting entirely different camera lines.
Quote: Pentax needs to narrow their focus, not expand it. create a new category and dominate that, weather it be affordable medium format (a category no one has touched to date) or the entry level (where pentax are already doing quite well).
These are definitely good things: especially since they're basically farming out their P&S models to other makers, anyway. They definitely won't find advantage by mimicking the big brands price/seriousness hierarchy, but it doesn't mean the only answer is to only choose a couple of those categories and then try to directly 'compete.' (With a successful 'entry-level' like the K-x, *that* category can support a lot, but no one said that, for instance, they couldn't also keep up a back-to-basics-but-current-where-it counts option in a similar price range... Again, the student/workhorse camera. *No* one else is doing that, and Pentax has always been the traditional go-to-guys for students and *teachers.*
Quote: The semi pro and Pro models are long sailed ships. Ask your average joe blogs which dslr camera maker they think best fits the "pro" image and the ingrained image of a Canon or a Nikon will inevitably pop up. No amount of money in the world is going to change that perception (all the money spent to date by Canikon has been to own that exact perception, in other words...the others came to the party maybe a decade too late.)They need a niche market, not more models.
"Perception" is fickle. "Competing for the poser market" is just something that'll eat itself.
Cause telling 'Pro's' "If you want the big-company professional services, do it our way or we'll say you're not a professional," ...well, that's the fastest way to have unenthusiastic customers feeling insulted and trapped at best. Look at what happened to Windows.
To 'cede the field of serious cameras' is guaranteed to not impress anyone. Pentax needs to play to their strengths and do things differently, not accept others' definitions.
Trying to play the 'pro branding' too hard is actually self-defeating. Nothing gave Nikon an unfriendly image like a few 'pros' (and noobs) sneering over their F3's and not being able to shoot their way out of a paper bag.
(That's where the old Canon-Nikon feud originated, anyway. When Nikon fell behind in the digital race, ...Hoo hoo, old stuff seems to have come up.
Pentax, on the other hand, always had an image of being the brand of competent artists and students and all the usual: where they screwed the pooch marketingwise was trying to rebrand themselves as 'budget' and try to create 'image' instead of *images* with weird 'features' and finishes and plastickeyness. )
Even one out of twenty five DSLRs is... A lot of DSLRs.
It's *slower,* maybe, but that seems to suit their manufacturing and management situation as it's been the past few years, but some of the best marketing they can *have* is to put serious stuff in the hands of those of us who are *neither* about pretense nor big budgets, just out there looking like we know what we're doing and getting the images.
People who are like, 'I bought this Nikon or Canon cause they were supposed to be 'the best' and am having a hard time,' they wanna be 'what are you using?'
What Pentax really needs most right now, I think, is to come out with like a DA 28 or 30 /2 or 1.7 WR, or something like that, affordably... The affordable nice normal prime Pentax always considered bread and butter, keep options to not dumb-down, nor dig in menues, let people *learn and actually get the nice results instead of spending near a grand and being told they need a nicer zoom....
Especially in these times when 'conspicuous consumption' and brand prestige are *out* for most thoughtful people, trying to cultivate the 'This is the necessary status symbol, be a 'pro,' ' ...Well, most thoughtful people are like, "This is a) intimidading, b) Obnoxious, and c) Not getting me the promised better photos."
There's plenty of room to grow, there. 'Competing marketshare image' doesn't belong inside the decision curve. Pentax needs to cater to the 'serious' photographers because we're cheaper than celebrity marketing.
I mean, I don't go around telling people to 'buy some Pentax,' (If Pentax would make the affordable prime, I probably would under a number of circumstances) And I say, lean toward making it a 28: a lot of these folks running around with cell phone cams are handier with the Photoshop than *I* am at this point, go ahead and let them crop. Give em a current prime lens that'll be smaller, lighter, weather-tolerant, and blow away *everyone's* kit zoom for a couple hundred bucks. It'll fly. Really)